


Nonstop

by voidstained



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Historical RPF
Genre: Angst, Codependency, Coping, Denial, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 14:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9276047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidstained/pseuds/voidstained
Summary: Alexander Hamilton could never quite be seen as a beautiful person beyond the means on conventional attraction and even then his beauty was rather debatable depending on who you were asking.





	

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah basically the only manner of actual coping with grief that I have is through writing and shit this is how im gonna mourn, isn't it? with shitty fanfics written at two am with no regard for editing. legit, i aint even read through this once after i wrote it. sorry y'all!!!!

Alexander Hamilton could never quite be seen as a beautiful person beyond the means on conventional attraction and even then his beauty was rather debatable depending on who you were asking. Sure- Hamilton had been the ladies man in his youth, bedding many women (and  men, if you knew who to ask) and in his prime, he’d even managed to marry a wealthy woman with black eyes- oh, her eyes. God, he was obsessed with her eyes, as dark as obsidian but brighter than any amount of light- but he had never been  _ beautiful.  _ He had always had long and frizzy hair, falling from his ponytail, always had paler skin than others due to how often he would stay inside to work, always had dark circles under his eyes, chapped lips, bruised knuckles, picked-at nails. He never had never been beautiful internally but he always had been more of a storm- a hurricane, he’d been compared to, much to his distaste. 

He’d always been frayed around the edges, high speeds of wind around him as the torrential downpour of his personality brought structures down. There was always a calm inside of him, knowing that every step could be his last. He always saw life in tones of yellow and green rather than red, the sickness that surrounded him consuming him rather than the anger. He’d began his life with sickness so he felt it fit him well- he didn’t consider his birth the beginning of Alexander Hamilton: poetic writer. No, he felt is was much more the death of his mother that truly created him, that instilled the need to live into his mind and soul. He also figured that sickness would be the end of himself as well, whether by illness based upon madness or true illness. It would be a poetic ending and he found it rather hilarious, a chuckle falling past his lips as he thought of the end, a grim reminder that he actually would end one day.

John Laurens was the only person who genuinely took the time to see the beauty in Alexander and even those days were gone. The last slivers of the shiny silver lining of Alexander’s personality, the last remains of his beauty, has died with Laurens. It had passed through and out of Alexander like the musket ball had passed though John’s chest in South Carolina, a place that was worlds away from Alexander. 

Alexander was not a stupid man. He wasn’t dull, he wasn’t slow, he wasn’t mad.

He was in mourning. 

Of course, Alexander could not publicly admit to his mourning. He only ever would admit to it while on his knee infront of his wife, her soft and smooth hands tangled into his hair as she spoke in soft, soothing words while she allowed him to bury his face into her lap and only waited as his tears stained themselves into the cotton fabric of her nightgown.

Later, as she washed the laundry in the washbasin, she would come across those particular gowns and hold the fabric tight in her hands as she stared at the dark stain- a reminder that Alexander was not hers, not for one moment. He has belonged to John Laurens for many more years than she had known Alexander and accepted it, accepted that he would remain Laurens’ for many years after his death. She could not fault her husband for his love, even if the very idea of her husband being sodomized bringing a sharp ache to her stomach, a dull thought of how her husband might not ever reach the same paradise that she would in the afterlife. Nonetheless, she only wished happiness onto him and she realized that he had found happiness many years before she entered his narrative, realized that to him, happiness came in the form of tanned skin and curly hair and a deep laugh and freckles comparable to the most beautiful of stars. He had found happiness in someone who would never be her, no matter how much love he felt for her- she wouldn’t ever be enough. 

So instead, Eliza would hold her husband tight as she knew that he would never publicly grieve for John Laurens. He could never write essays about how he longed to singly graze knuckles with John again, how he could never hear a deep and throaty laugh in the middle of a warfield in a tent while Alexander was bathed in his own sweat but still felt as if he were dipped into a basin of freezing water, his fever brought delirium making him ramble on about the craziest of ideas while John sat at his side to make sure he didn’t slip too far into his fever and passed the time by laughing at the insanity that was coming out in jumbles from Alexander’s mouth. Alexander could never wear his black mourning apparel while he visited a grave once it was delivered from South Carolina to the Trinity Church in Manhattan, could never fall to his knees in front of the headstone and weep, leaving flowers behind when he’d left. He could never speak volumes of how he knew that John dreaded the return home to a woman he barely knew after the secession of the war, how he’d only bedded her once and created a child that he didn’t want. He could never tell the public about how John was an utterly reckless man, a mad apostate child of Apollo, someone who fought for the notion of what was right instead of fighting for segregation even after he had grown up in its benefit, having been born into the lap of Southern luxury with a silver spoon in his mouth.

No, Alexander could never do any of that. He could deny it though, he could deny that anything was wrong, that anything had changed. So, of course, he did exactly that. He denied it when Lafayette knocked at his door, a  heavy expression on his face. He denied it when Aaron Burr gave his regards. He denied it when his commander, George Washington, asked if he needed to take leave.

“It’s fine,” he would insist with a bright smile which didn’t quite meet his eyes- they were dull regardless, “honestly, there’s no need to worry about me. I’m doing as well as I ever have!"

Alexander Hamilton had become a man who was nonstop out of necessity, as if it were a technique of survival and in a way, it was. His work was truly the only reason that he was alive, the only reason that he had made it to the promised land. Often, he would sit at his desk and think back to his childhood, a happier time. He thought of his father sitting on the beach with his mother, the red headed scottish man laughing with an arm around the curly haired, brunette woman, as they laughed at him and his brother, both still so small at the time as they dashed along the shore, toes covered in the cold, salty water. He thought back to the time when his father left, promising to return from his homeland soon although he never did. His mother had to begin working harder, then, after losing the income from her husband.  He thought back to the time when he was curled up in his mother’s arms, barely conscious as she promised him to stay until the sun rose once again. (“Hasta el amanecer,” she would whisper as she kissed his forehead lightly, barely able to feel the tiny boy in her arms, “el amanecer..”) He thought back to when he had his brother buried her, when he had buried his brother, when he had buried his cousin. He thought back to the first time he’d ever worked, at the young age of thirteen, claiming to be fourteen instead to make himself seem more eligible for the position of a clerk for his late mother’s landlord. He thought back to when his work was the only reason he could eat that week, to when his work was the only reason he was able to leave the god forsaken island and sail to New York, where he could make a change, a place where he could be a new man.

Work, he still was working in the courtroom which he now stood in, a tired expression on his face but still moved forward nonetheless.    


Hamilton approached the judge, a generous and respectable nod towards his honor as he began to speak in the most passionate of tones that he could muster.

“I intend to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt with my assistant counsel-”

“Co-counsel, Hamilton,” Burr rolled his eyes from his place at the counsel chair, stacking papers neatly before he stood, taking his time, “Sit down. Our client, Levi Weeks, is innocent! That’s all you had to say!” 

Alexander met his gaze, lips turning down into the slightest of frowns before his shoulders perked once more, a skip in his step as he turned to the jury. 

“Okay, one more thing!” 

Burr could only groan softly to himself.

After the hearing, Hamilton felt himself be dragged back into the courtroom, past the masses of benches were the public was to sit. He felt his back hit painfully into wooden divide of where the jury would sit and to where the defense would linger, questioning and defending.    


“Why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room?” Burr stood before him, arms crossed over his chest with a sinister gaze in his eyes- the man was finally giving an opinion on something, even without his words, and that something was Hamilton himself. 

“Soon that attitude may be your doom!” And with that, Burr had left the room and Alexander would feel the bruises on his back for weeks, a reminder that even though he could hide thing, they would still hurt, a reminder that John was gone and while he could hide his mourning, the grief would still exist. 

Alexander would begin writing with a ferocity that had not been exhibited by himself for quite some time, after that incident. With the dip pen to the page, he would write for hours, for days, until he got his point across, until he had no more words left to say. He would tell the masses about the corruption that could be easily seen if one would simply open their eyes and  _ look,  _ centralized in Albany. He explained exactly just why the stall in the colony’s economy brought him to want to service the public. He wrote and he wrote until he was chosen for the Constitutional Convention. Even then, he was non-stop.

Alexander, being Alexander and being reckless in his grief and without a care in the world, went on to propose a new form of government, talking for six hours. He found a large amount of pleasure in this- here, when he took the floor, he had it until he deemed he was finished. 

Alexander talked until he was finished, until he was satisfied with the end result.

He could deny all he wanted, deny the death of his lover, deny that Eliza wasn’t enough deny that he wouldn’t ever be satisfied. It was when he no longer denied things that he finally stopped.

Late in the evening as the sun was setting, he found himself on his knees once more, in front of his wife, fingers in a familiar position in his hair. 

“Eliza,” he whispered in the most torn voice, shoulders shaking with the force of the sobs escaping his body, “I, I will never be satisfied.” The only response that Eliza gave to the man that was not hers was a small, soft smile which quickly morphed into a light frown when he pushed away from her for the first time, tears still in his eyes. 

“Alexander,” her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper as she stood after him, brushing her hands slowly over where the cotton gown was soaked with the salty remnant of his grief, “look at where you are, where you started.. The fact that you’re alive is a miracle. Just.. Just stay alive, stay mentally sound, that would be enough! Why can’t I, your wife, share a fraction of your mind? He is gone, Alexander.. Why can’t I grant you peace of mind after all these years? Would that not be enough? Will I be enough?”

“I’m going to see Burr,” he announced softly. 


End file.
